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03/14/2012

Settling down in Delhi - Part 1

No new good news… Settling down here is no easy thing. I found my flat rather quickly. Not furnished. My stuff arrived rather quickly of Mumbai. So well packed… I almost missed my cat’s tiny mouse toy because it was wrapped in so much paper!

My mobile line was one hell of a hardship and still, I can not activate the option of international calls before one month. I went to insult them in the shop (or more exactly the call center (as this is they only thing they would ever tell you “visit our Vodafone store”) sent to me to the shop to give a cheque of guarantee which they did not even want to consider before the first bill so I got really pissed off). Internet happened surprisingly quickly: 36 hours with Airtel. With regard to Reliance, I am still expecting their call – they committed to do it within 7 working days and it has been 20 …

The gas… I did not rush since I believed I had a building connection. Well no. I need a cylinder. Off course all the numbers which I found online were dead ends. So I went to a shop in a small closed market. A squalid place. Two guys in a mini-office. A man with a kind of grin took my papers, asked fifty questions. With his funky grin I could see it coming, that would not work out. And thus :- “One month” - “One month what?” - “One month of waiting” - “Not” - “Not??” - “Bah no hein” I did not let this get to me and went straight away to another shop. Immediately more engaging: a dozen of delivery vans and hundreds of cylinders. But let us not rejoice too quickly. An old woman takes my documents, enters some data in the system, gives me a form to fill and make notarised. Fate does things well: with my struggle to get a sim card, I got to know where the notary is!! I thus get it done. Kafkaesque. I go back to the gas agency and this is where that the problems start. They will send me a registered letter and I must come back with this letter. But how could I receive since I am never at home during the day time? It is a problem indeed… The poor fellow thinks hard but there seems to be no option. They need to check that I live at home. Finally he asks me to come back next Saturday. Let’s see what will happen…